Sunday, December 20, 2015

As mentioned on Friday, we’re taking our annual break from social media to enjoy in-person holiday festivities with our families. We’ll be back on the first Monday of 2016, and we hope you’ll rejoin us as we begin yet another nerdy history year. Thank you for continuing to encourage us!

We wish you the most joyous of holiday seasons and a New Year filled with all kinds of good things, historical and otherwise.

Image of what is apparently a news carrier’s greeting card—appropriate, we thought, for the 2NHG bringers of old news. Dated between 1880-90. Image courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

Clicking on the image will enlarge it. Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Breakfast Links on Friday? Why not? Loretta and I are heading off on our annual holiday break from the blog and the rest of social media, but I couldn't go away without posting one more round of Breakfast Links. You're just getting them a bit early this week.
• What greed put asunder (a stunning 13thc. missal) scholarship can reunite.
• The untold story of the hairbrush.
• How Thomas Jefferson learned architecture.
• Piecing together the life of centenarian Mary Hicks (died 1870), who spent the last 27 years of her long life as an inmate in the Brentford Workhouse.
• Ten of England's most beautiful and historical synagogues.
• Image: Amazing photo of a woman cleaning casks for Tennents Brewery during World War One.
• The science of life and death in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.• Exploring Hyde Park's hidden pet cemetery.• Arelonger wordsfalling out of use because of texting and social media?
• Did you read this series? The Cherry Ames nurse books, published between 1943-1968.
• Dissecting the dream of the 1890s: A skype-date with those curiousneo-Victorians.• An American historian meets theAmerican Girl dolls.•Image: This unpicked 19thcbodiceof 18thc silkbrocade is equally stunning on the reverse side, where the weave creates a stripe.
• Clothes make the woman: a century of Chinese women and what they wore.
• Victorian adventures and terrible tales: the Illustrated Police News.• The historical stories that make Revolutionary War researchers laugh.• We can dream: some seriously amazing holiday party dressesfrom the Metropolitan Museum of Art.• The otherBoleyn girl'sdaughter.
• A pair of stunning mid-19thc. papier mache bookbindings with mother of pearl here and here.• A Georgianfarting club.• Didfalsified medieval historyhelp create feminism?
• The snowflake man from Vermont produced the first photographs of snowflakes in 1885.
• Image: Carbonized bread from Herculaneum, 79 CE.
• The poignant last letter of Mary Queen of Scotsbefore her execution.
• Designer Jacqueline Durran's 11thc-style costumes for the latest film version of Macbeth.
• The Georgian circulating library.
• How an intern saved a museum by discovering this Revolutionary War treasure in the attic.
• Just for fun: cartoonish Kate Beaton draws the painter J.M.W.Turner and some of this artistic contemporaries.Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

In the early 19th century, Christmas wasn’t even close to the gigantic consumer event it is today. “20 Great Gift Ideas Under $25” or “50 Must-Have Gifts under $100” or some other list didn’t appear in every periodical, and holiday sales were not ubiquitous. Or even existent, apparently.

But sellers did offer a gentle nudge here and there. In the advertising pages of the December 1833 Court Journal, I came upon these.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Last week, quite by accident, I attended a 185th birthday party for American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). While visiting Harvard's Houghton Library to see their current exhibition (more about that in a future post), I was invited to join the festivities by friend-of-the-blog Andrea Cawelti, Ward Music Cataloger at Houghton. How could I resist?

Such a celebration wasn't surprising. The Emily Dickinson Collection at Houghton is the largest in the world devoted to the poet, and contains everything from hand-stitched manuscript copies of her poems to the small desk on which she wrote them. But the centerpiece of this party wasn't a poem. It was a recipe.

Emily Dickinson's handwritten recipe for Black Cake - the name comes from the dark color created by the ingredients - is a typical 19thc. cake for holidays and celebrations, rich in dried fruit and spices and laced with equal parts of molasses and rum. It's also dauntingly large, requiring nineteen eggs (!) and producing over twelve pounds of batter.

Two intrepid members of Houghton's staff recreated the recipe in all its glory (and beat all those eggs by hand) for the party. Emilie Hardman, Research, Instruction, and Digital Initiatives Librarian and Emily Walhout, Reference Assistant, are the stars of the above video, showing exactly how they made the cake - or rather, several cakes, since the amount of batter exceeded any modern cake pans.

Much like the Rich Cake for Twelfth Night that I featured here last week, this cake needed a month to "mature" and meld the flavors and alcohol. It was worth the wait: I can report that the cake was absolutely delicious, and as you can see, left, I wasn't the only one to think so.

If you want to try the cake yourself, here's the digital version of Emily Dickinson's original handwritten recipe, and here's the post from Houghton Library's blog with more information about the cake.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

In response to a recent fashion post, a reader asked, “What class of women could afford this cape? What was the cost of fashion and what fabrics were used to create the cape?”

High fashion was expensive then and it’s expensive today. La Belle Assemblée, where those plates came from, was aimed at upper class women. A very rough analogy would be today’s Vogue or Harpers Bazaar. The fashions are mainly for wealthy women.

The Regency History site provides some LBA prices in the Regency era here. And Mike Rendell has info here. On my own, I found that LBA in 1826 cost 3 shillings. Ackermann’s Repository cost 4s. In 1833 The Royal Lady’s Magazine sold for 2s 6d.

Compare this to the Ladies Cabinet of Fashion which sold for 6d. The Lady's Pocket Magazine, the source of the fashion plates on this page, was another low-priced magazine. These were smaller, and the plates weren’t cruder. But the low price indicates readers at a lower economic level, who still wanted fashionable clothing. Basically, this would mean using less expensive material, since labor costs were negligible.

In Nicholas Nickleby,* a seamstress’s terms of employment are as follows: “Our hours are from nine to nine**with extra work when we’re very full of business, for which I allow payment as overtime ... I should think your wages would average from five to seven shillings a week; but I can’t give you any certain information on that point until I see what you can do.”

But a seamstress is a lowly position. How about this ad from The Sheffield Independent, and Yorkshire and Derbyshire Advertiser for February 1835?

Wanted.

A widow and her daughter, Members of the Church of England, to undertake the Management of the GIRLS’ CHARITY SCHOOL, in this Town, and the Instruction of the Children. Piety, Ability, and Activity are necessary qualifications; and references as to these must be given, as well as to general Respectability of Character ... Salary. £ 52. 10s. a year.

A pair of those shoes would take a sizable chunk of Kate’s weekly wages.

I couldn’t track down Luxmore. What I did find was:
"Luxor—A soft, ribbed silk satin: used as dress fabric: also an obsolete French woolen dress goods."— Louis Harmuth, Dictionary of Textiles.

Since this post is already too long, I'll continue with fabric costs and wages at another time.
*Dickens, who was a journalist at heart, tends to be pretty reliable in terms of living and working conditions.
**Six days a week.

Sunday, December 13, 2015

In modern holiday celebrations, mistletoe has become something of a kitsch-y joke, the inevitable prop for I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus humor.

But in the 1790s, when the print, left, was published, mistletoe still had an aura of wickedness, even danger. The ancient Druidic traditions linking mistletoe and fertility had not been forgotten, and kissing beneath the mistletoe was thought to lead to more promiscuity, or even - shudder! - marriage.

Certainly the four merry young couples in this print appear to be enjoying themselves. Some scholarly descriptions refer to this as a dance scene, and perhaps it does show nothing more than a particularly rollicking country dance.

Still, I can't help but think that at any moment some stern-faced, indignant elder is going to appear in the doorway and demand to know what exactly is going on down here. I'm guessing the artist thought that, too, from the caption he added to the bottom: "Whilst Romp loving Miss is haul'd about/With gallantry robust." (The attribution to Milton is incorrect; the line is from a poem by the 18th c. Scottish poet James Thomson.) In any event, there's no doubt that these are romp-loving misses being haul'd about by their robust gallants. No wonder Christmas mistletoe was so popular!

Saturday, December 12, 2015

It's time for Breakfast Links - our weekly round-up of fav links to other articles, images, blogs, and websites via Twitter.
• Poignant and evocative: original recordings of Irish soldiers' songs, made in German prisoner of war camps during World War One.
• Hold the butter! A brief history of gorging.
• Charming letter from Santa to Mark Twain's three-year-old daughter (though Santa sounds suspiciously like Mark Twain....)
• Bearded ladies, on display.
• Strikingly modern ancient textiles.
• An unusual quiz: which medieval torture method would you use on your enemies?
• For the holidays: how to prepare a turkey in pre-Revolutionary America.
• Image: Falstaff in an 1823 fore edge painting.
• An appalling trail of historical distortion: how the African victims of the Zong Massacre were replaced by "Irish slaves."
• When was the London Season?
• The erotics of shaving in Victorian Britain.
• Indian chintz: a legacy of luxury around the world.
• The humble petitioners of 18thc London.
• Medieval spam: the oldest advertisements for books.
• Image: Dragoon helmet, First Troop, Philadelphia City Calvary, 1835
• The 19thc. motherhood trap: why were so few Victorian women writers also mothers?
• Witches and grandma's tomato sauce.
• To consider next time you're in a store: what fashion mannequins say about us.
• Important historical question: do you have a barber?
• Image: Someone was naughty: child-sized hands traced on the pages of an 1852 book.
• In 1816 England, the pillory was used to punish sodomy, pimping, fraud, perjury, and theft that involved breach of trust.
• Shoe and plaster cast of a Chinese woman's bound foot c1890.
• How the tiny island of Nantucket became the 19thc. whaling capital of the world.
• The history of the hamburger.
• Image: The Library Company's amazing suggestion box with a lion's mouth, c1750.
• Fifteenth century recipes to entertain in an Exeter cathedral library manuscript.
• Norman Cross, French Prisoner of War camp in Huntingdonshire, begun in 1796.
• First-person account of what it was like to be a poor Victorian child attending a "ragged school."
• Two women physicians appear in the illustrations of this 14thc. manuscript, and here's a female medical student shown in another 14thc. manuscript.
• Photos of soldiers' inventories showcase 1,000 years of fighting gear.
• Exploring Hyde Park's hidden pet cemetery.Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.

Friday, December 11, 2015

So it is, and so begins the song “Slap that Bass,” which Fred Astaire sang in 1937’s Shall We Dance.

He appears quite often in this video, as he ought, along with many other of my favorite singers/dancers from the movies’ golden age. During the 1930s, musicals offered hours of happy escape from a very difficult world. In that spirit, and the spirit of the holidays, I offer this delightful mashup, wherein great talents of an earlier generation move beautifully to music of our time.

With thanks to author Candice Hern, who posted this on Facebook, and brightened my day.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be. To watch the video, please click on the title to this post.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

If you were the cook for a great house in the 17th-early 19th centuries, or simply a woman who lived in a sufficiently prosperous household, you'd be baking your Rich Cake, left, for Twelfth Night celebrations now. The Christmas holidays were also a popular time for weddings,and the Rich Cake would be the wedding cake of choice, too.

Celebratory cakes of the past were not the frothy, towering constructions of piped and colored icing that they are now. What made them festive was the lavishness of their ingredients, not their outer display. These cakes would be rich with eggs and butter and sugar, candied fruit and costly imported spices, brandy and sherry. With eggs as the only leavening, the texture would be dense to modern tastes, more of a cross between our pound cake and a fruit cake. But because the ingredients were fresh (or freshly ground), there'd be none of the chemical-preservative flavor that makes many 21st century fruitcakes such bad jokes.

Rich Cakes were often baked in a Turk's-head pan, shaped much like contemporary Bundt pans. Once unmolded, they could be wrapped in cloth and soaked with more liquor to develop their flavor and moistness. By the time the cakes were served in late December or January, they would truly be worth their star status on the holiday table.

During a recent visit to Colonial Williamsburg, the cooks in the kitchen of the Governor's Palace were baking the Rich Cakes for Twelfth Night. I was there for the final unmolding, right, a process that apparently involves exactly the same held-breaths and crossed fingers familiar to modern bakers. But as you can see, the cake slipped free with nary a crumb left behind.

If you'd like to try making a Rich Cake yourself, Colonial Williamsburg has put the recipe that they use (from Hannah Glasse's classic 18th c. cookbook The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy) on their Historic Foodways site. In case the non-specific nature of an 18th c. recipe is too daunting, the site provides a modern version, too.

But what did Theodore Roosevelt have to do with the Paines?
The clue lies in this wedding invitation (recently discovered, if I remember correctly*). It’s tricky trying to take photos of objects under glass, and we had a very sunny day. But the invitation reads:

“Mrs. and Mrs. George C. Lee request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of their daughter, Wednesday, October Twenty-seventh at Twelve o’clock, Unitarian Church, Brookline.”

Mr. and Mrs. Lee’s Daughter was Alice Hathaway Lee. The Timothy Bigelow Chapter of the DAR, whose chapter house this is, did some research and learned that she was a great-great-great-granddaughter of Judge Timothy Paine. This is an invitation to her wedding to Theodore Roosevelt in 1880. Sadly, she died on Valentine’s Day 1884, two days after giving birth to the formidable Alice Lee Roosevelt.

I thought the teddy bear display was a charming way to celebrate the holiday as well as the Roosevelt-Paine connection—just one example of the discoveries and intriguing network of history related to this lovely old house.

*You can find out more here about the intriguing bits of history that turn up in the Oaks.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Over the weekend I spotted his illustration, above, on the Instagram account of the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. (As always, click on the image to enlarge it.) The illustration was drawn by George Barbier for the Journal des dames at des modes in 1913. The title translates to "The Madness of the Day," referring to the new dance crazes that were both wilder and more athletic than those of the generation before, as the scandalized older couple on the right make clear.

But there's more than just the dancing to earn their disapproval: the women's fashionable figures are slender and boyish, and their revealing evening clothes are not only cut to show more than a flash of ankle, but are worn without the sturdy corseting of the past. The men are equally slender, and sleekly androgynous with their pink cheeks and slicked back hair. The couples are elegant and stylish, and determined to turn their backs on the past as they represent the new generation.

Yet they also reminded me of another pair of couples from a hundred years before. In the 1810 print La Walse: Le Bon Genre by James Gillray, these dancers are also engaged in a scandalous new dance - the waltz - that has them touching one another with then-shocking freedom. They're wearing trendy, revealing clothing, cut narrowly close to the body, that was a complete departure from the stiff formality of the 18th c. The women wear neither stays nor hoops, and instead embrace the "modern", more slender silhouette. All four of them are so dedicated to the new fashions and dance that they've earned consideration by Gillray's scathing pen.

I also spotted another small similarity between these two illustrations: there are tassels swinging from the hems of dresses in both. I'm sure you can find others. Since fashion tends to run in cycles, none of this is surprising, and I'm certain that somewhere out there is a caricature c.2015, drawn on an iPad or other tablet, that shows a pair of lithe young couples in body-conscious clothing, swept away by the rhythm of the latest trance music in the club....

Monday, December 7, 2015

I came upon this advertisement while looking for something else. Mr. Grimstone has created a cure for eye ailments as well as headaches. Well, they can go together. The interesting part was the snuff—non-tobacco, by the way.

A little further research showed me that mine might have been one of Mr. Grimstone’s earlier ads, that his eye-snuff was a household word often employed for comic purposes in novels,
and in magazines like Punch, and that he was harassed by the excise people. That last link will take you to quite the tale of woe.

A Cyclopedia of Domestic Medicine says “Grimstone’s eye-snuff ... is of service in many cases of chronic ophtalmia.”

Saturday, December 5, 2015

It's time for Breakfast Links - our weekly round-up of fav links to other articles, images, blogs, and websites via Twitter.
• Sartorial dissections: clothes in the early 20thc photographs of Christina Broom.
• How a design student transformed traditional Hungarian needlework patterns into beautiful music.
• A man-cave for an Enlightenment gentleman.
• Coconuts weren't as rare in medieval England as Monty Python & the Holy Grail wanted you to think.
• The dangers of fringed gloves.
• Image: The Flapper magazine, 1922: "not for old fogies."
• Did you save that lucky wishbone from Thanksgiving? This one was embellished with a diamond and a pearl!
• Haberdashery trade cards from the 18th-19thc.
• Protecting Grace Darling's coble.
• Diamond jewelry was very rare in 18thc. America, but Martha Washington wore this multi-stone ring - with a secret.
• Conserving the 200-year-old Kinfauns Castle recipe book.
• Image: From National Button Day: a 19thc button with a design of woven hair in different shades.
• There's both a tech conference and a navy destroyer named after this person - yet you've never heard of her.
• There really was a Winnie-the-Pooh - a female bear cub from Winnipeg, Canada, brought to England at the start of World War One.
• An intricately inlaid 17thc. cabinet for holding stationary and writing instruments.
• The rise and fall of the military moustache.
• Image: Melodramatic book covers from 1880s-90s pulp fiction.
• A recipe to try with 17thc. origins: cinder toffee.
• The original 1807 Nelson's Needle monument near Portsmouth was paid for by the crew of HMS Victory.
• How a 19thc Finnish librarian decoded the world's folklore.
• Won't someone save this scandalously neglected French chateau?
• Image: An ingeneous folding trunk bed.Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.

Friday, December 4, 2015

Loretta and I often share things from women's magazines of the past. One of the earliest and most important ones was the Lady's Magazine, first published in 1770. Like women's magazines today, the contents of the Georgian Lady's Magazine included fashion tips, entertaining fiction, society gossip, and music. It also included patterns for embroidery, an important feature in an era when a lady's accomplishments usually included skilled needlework.

But while many issues of the Lady's Magazine are available online and through libraries and other collections, those needlework patterns are often missing. This makes sense - any needleworker who wished to replicate the designs would have pulled them from the magazine and tucked them into her workbag - but it's frustrating for modern readers.

One of our-blog friends, Dr. Jennie Batchelor, is leading a two-year project funded by the Leverhulme Trust and based at the University of Kent. Titled The Lady's Magazine (1770-1818): Understanding the Emergence of a Genre, the project will be studying the importance of the Lady's Magazine, and aims to shed new light on its role as one of the longest-running women's magazines of all time. Recently Dr. Batchelor was given a copy of the July half-year issue for 1796 (you can read her account of that acquisition here). Miraculously, the issue included the needlework patterns.

Now here's the challenge. Dr. Batchelor and her team generously scanned these patterns, and are making them available for free as actual-size jpgs here. In return, they'd like to see how the patterns inspire modern craftspeople. While those of you who are re-enactors or who enjoy replicating historic dress might copy the patterns literally - of course your Significant Other needs that New Pattern for a Gentleman's Cravat! - but don't feel you must be limited to traditional embroidery. Perhaps you see the patterns as inspiration for a hooked pillow cover, a quilting motif, or beading on the sleeve of a jean jacket. Dr. Batchelor would love to see your work, and will share the best along with your stories on the project blog.

Be creative, and follow in the footsteps of your needleworking sisters from the Georgian era!

As you might expect, the gravestone was only the tip of the iceberg (sorry). A search took me to an extensive Wikipedia biography of Fanny Workman Bullock.
She turns out to be the famous one, appearing in at least a dozen books, along with having written several of her own, with her husband. He, by the way, doesn’t even get a Wikipedia page.

I am not going to attempt to condense the extensive story because I wouldn’t know what to leave out. In a nutshell, along with being a mountaineer who climbed the Himalayas in the early 1900s, she was a Suffragist and a New Woman.
I’ll excerpt one little bit:

~~~

Fanny led them across the Sia La pass (18,700 feet or 5,700 metres) near the head of the Siachen Glacier and through a previously unexplored region to the Kaberi Glacier. This exploration and the resulting book were among her greatest accomplishments. As she wrote in her book about the trip, Two Summers in the Ice-Wilds of Eastern Karakoram, she organized and led this expedition: "Dr. Hunter Workman accompanied me, this time, in charge with me of commissariat and as photographer and glacialist, but I was the responsible leader of this expedition, and on my efforts, in a large measure, must depend the success or failure of it". At one 21,000-foot (6,400 m) plateau, Fanny unfurled a "Votes for Women" newspaper and her husband snapped an iconic picture.

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

I saw these 18thc. shoes earlier this year as part of the exhibition Cosmopolitan Consumption: New England Shoe Stories 1750-1850 held by the Portsmouth (NH) Athenaeum. I've written about other shoes and garments from the show (here, here, and here), but there's something about the cheerful red and green brocade of this pair that made me want to share them now in December.

These shoes are made not of silk, but of wool brocade. Long-wearing and easily dyed, wool was a popular choice for women's shoes in the 18thc., but not many survive in modern collections. Wool is a protein-fiber that's a tasty treat for moths, and while these shoes have been expertly conserved, there is still moth damage along the sides and fronts that reveals the linen lining. The shoes would have been fastened with buckles through the straps across the top of the foot; buckles were considered fashion accessories that were switched from pair to pair.

These were fashionable shoes, too. Not only was the brocade expensive, but the high, curving heels were more stylish than practical, and it's likely the shoes belonged to a wealthy woman. While their complete history isn't known, the label pasted inside one of the shoes shows they were made by John Hose, a prominent London cordwainer (shoemaker) whose shoes were imported to the American colonies. The shoes are "straights," without a defined left or right, and were probably not bespoke, but bought from the shopkeeper who had imported them.

There's another clue that these shoes were valued. Look closely at the vamp, below the straps, in the photo, right. At some point, the shoes were widened with a gusset, an inset piece of solid-colored cloth. Did the original owner need the additional room because of pregnancy, age, or illness? Or were the alterations made by a later owner? No matter the reason, the shoes were clearly important enough to the wearer to have them carefully adjusted for longer wear - a very different philosophy from today's "fast fashion."

Many thanks to our good friend Kimberly Alexander for assistance with this post. For more information about these shoes and many others, stayed tuned for her upcoming book Georgian Shoe Stories From Early America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016.)

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Because the events of Dukes Prefer Blondes *occur through the second half of 1835, I was on the hunt for fashions for that time period. This led me to purchase my very own copy of La Belle Assemblée. Being accustomed to viewing fashion plates online, I was stunned by the quality of the originals. While my scans are little nicer quality than some Google Book scans of LBA, they are still not nearly as fine as the originals, alas. Also, sleeves get cut off, because of the book binding.

Please note the “violet satin cloak”—I am not quite clear what the description of the cape means, but it might explain why the lady’s right arm seems to come through an opening in the cape and her left seems to be underneath this garment.

FASHIONS FOR THE MONTH OF DECEMBER 1835

Walking Dress.

A cloak of Luxmore, of a bright brown, with a rich pattern in black; it is made as a pelisse, fitting closely to the figure, excepting the sleeves, which hang full from the shoulders. A dress of pale lilac cachemire, bonnet of sapphire blue velvet.

Standing Figure.

Cloak of violet satin, embroidered round with a light pattern of bright chenille, a deep cape lined with velvet; the cape finishes at the shoulder, and turning back, forms a second in velvet. Dress of green cachemire, bonnet of black velvet, trimmed with ponçeau, and black and ponçeau vulture feathers.

Sitting Figure.

A morning dress of cinnamon satin, wraps to the side, is bordered entirely round with a double edge of velvet scalloped. Pelerine to correspond, a simple cap of blonde lace tied with cerise riband, the borders rather wide and full round the face, and supported by chrysanthemum.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Years ago when my daughter was younger, my husband and I conspired to make the ultimate (at least that year!) Christmas present for her: a big wooden dollhouse with a swinging door across the front, wallpaper in every room and clapboarding on the outside, a shingled roof, and a chimney covered with tiny bricks. We had a blast making it, but from Christmas morning onward we realized the house would become a never-ending work in progress, with my daughter frequently "redecorating" with new furnishings, rugs, tiny pets, and even the occasional new doll-resident. Although she's outgrown the house now, it still occupies a place of pride in our living room, waiting until one day she'll take it to share with her own children.

That's probably why I am so drawn to this doll house, right, in the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg. The house was originally made for a pair of twin sisters from a prosperous Philadelphia family, Elizabeth Clifford Morris Canby (1813-1892) and Sarah Wistar Morris (1813-1826)), and was given to them some time around their seventh birthday in 1820. It remained in the family for over 150 years, until it was finally given to Colonial Williamsburg in the 1981. The numerous generations of girls that played with it are reflected in its somewhat unwieldy name: the Morris-Canby-Rumford Dollhouse.

Although this dollhouse is far from the most lavish in the CW collection, it was clearly cherished and clearly played with, and the rooms reflect changing tastes and styles as well as those of the young owners. While some of the furnishing are original, there were additions made all the way through the mid-20thc.

But my favorite addition to this dollhouse was made by Samuel Canby Rumford (1876-1950), grandson of original owner Elizabeth. While he made several pieces of miniature furniture for the house in the 1930s, the most impressive is the the tall chest-on-chest in the corner of the bedroom, above left.

Crafted from the thin wood of a cigar box, the chest is something of a double family heirloom: it's a tiny version of a full-sized mahogany chest-on-chest that had descended in the family since the 18thc. That original chest, left, was the work of celebrated cabinet-maker Thomas Affleck in 1775 as a wedding gift from father to daughter. It, too, was acquired by Colonial Williamsburg from the family, and it now stands (quite wonderfully) in the next gallery from the dollhouse with the miniature replica.

Monday, November 23, 2015

We in the U.S. celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November. Though we’ve been having Thanksgiving celebrations here since the 17th century, it took us a while to settle on the day, and it didn’t become a Federal Holiday until 1941.

To mark the occasion, the President pardons a turkey. The rest of us celebrate in our own way, often with family feasts. Usually, but not always, an unpardoned turkey holds the place of honor on the table.

The Two Nerdy History girls will this year, as we always do, take a break from blogging during Thanksgiving week, to spend time with our families. We’ll have plenty to be grateful for, including the loyal readers who aid and abet us in our historical nerdiness.

Whether or not you’re celebrating this week, we hope you, too, have a happy and festive week. We’ll look forward to your joining us again next Monday.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

It's time for Breakfast Links - our weekly round-up of fav links to other articles, images, blogs, and websites via Twitter.
• How suffragists used cookbooks as a recipe for subversion.
• The forgotten kaleidoscope craze of Victorian England.
• 350-year-old Italian collar seeks 350-year-old English dress for meaningful, short-term relationship.
• There once was a dildo in Nantucket....
• Can reading make you happier?
• Image: Hats are a good indicator of an image's date and the status of the people; this London street-scene dates from about 1902.
• How the ballpoint pen killed cursive.
• How Paul Revere's powerful image of the Boston Massacre was copied and reused repeatedly.
• The most popular boy's names in Tudor England.
• Lavish apartments for millionaires were fitted out like mansions in New York's now-lost Hotel Marguery.
• Over a million documents from the slavery era to be digitized and put online, helping African Americans learn more about lost ancestors.
• Image: "Society despairs of the Modern Woman, 1915."
• The first surgeon to successfully perform a C-section was a woman disguised as a man.
• How women's history and civil rights came to the Smithsonian.
• William Hogarth at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 1733.
• The exotic taste of rice.
• Controlling a small world: doll houses and gender roles.
• A block of flats in London with its own air-raid shelter - now preserved.
• Image: A fan with poppies for Armistice Day.
• Discovered: a lost short story by Edith Wharton, written in France during World War One.
• And also discovered: a previously unseen story and poem by Charlotte Bronte.
• A spicy history inside a round 19thc. wooden box.
• Image: 1910 suffragette banner signed by 80 hunger-strikers.
• Spreading their wings: the post-WWII Wingfoot homes for returning GIs.
• A brief history of London crypts.
• Nine pronunciation arguments you can stop having.
• The death of the ruthless Empress Tzu-hsi, who ruled imperial China for nearly half a century.Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.

Friday, November 20, 2015

This has been such a sorrowful week for the City of Lights. This short video, shot during the Exposition Universelle of 1900, captures a much different time, and a city and its people that were smiling and happy, confident and carefree. For the sake of Paris and the rest of the world, we hope those times return soon.

If you receive these posts via email, you may be seeing a black box or empty space where the video should be. Please click here to view the video.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

The way this is written, the robbery seems to have been a relatively civilized encounter. The robber, for instance, did not shoot his victim upon learning he had an undesirable watch and insufficient money. And nobody bothered Mrs. Atkins.

~~~

Kent

As Mr. and Mrs. Atkins, of Maidstone, were returning from London, on Thursday, Nov. 14, in their single horse chaise, just as they had reached the 15th mile-stone, corner of Birch Wood, about half past one o’clock in the afternoon, a man came out of a gap-way on the left-hand side of the road from London, and without saying a word, seized the horse by the head. Mr. Atkins immediately stood up in the chaise, and said he would not be robbed, and began to flog the man with his chaise-whip, in hopes of making him let go his horse’s head, upon which he drew his right hand from behind him and presented a horse-pistol. At that instant a companion of his (whom Mr. Atkins had not seen before) made his appearance, and going round the horse to Mr. Atkins’s side, demanded his money. Mr. A. finding his resistance useless, gave him four guineas; not satisfied with that, the robber said you have more. Mr. A. replied, yes, I have a little silver, and gave him to the amount of 10 s. The robber afterwards demanded his watch, which being in a tortoise-shell case, said he would be d—d if he would have, and repeatedly questioned him as to his having more money; but on Mr. A. assuring him he had not, he was suffered to proceed. The man who seized the horse never spoke a word all the time, but held the horse with his left hand and the pistol with his right; the other, who took the money, said, it was distress drove them to it. Neither of them attempted to rob Mrs. Atkins, nor did they say any thing to her. —La Belle Assemblée, Volume 2

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Loretta and I are great fans of the British caricaturists of the 1780s-1820s, including James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson, George Cruikshank, and many others. When their prints are mocking fashionable pretensions, politicians, or the royal family, the "joke" is still apparent, even after two hundred years. But then there are some prints that are real head-scratchers to modern eyes.

This one by James Gillray falls into that category. What exactly is going on here? (As always, click on the image to enlarge it.) The ladies appear to be dressing the soldiers in strange, buff-colored costumes, and displaying a certain lascivious eagerness in the process, too. While bare-breasted women are often found in 18thc. satirical prints, here Gillray offers a bit of titillating male nudity. Like most men of the time, the soldiers wear no under-drawers, but simply tuck their long shirt-tails between their legs. These ladies would clearly have gotten an eyeful, and this being Gillray, we should believe their rosy cheeks are due more to excitement than embarrassment.

The title offers some hints: "FLANNEL ARMOUR; FEMALE PATRIOTISM, or Modern Heroes accoutred for the Wars," as does the satirical dedication "To the benevolent Ladies of Great Britain, who have so liberally supported the new system of Military Clothing."

A bit of research explains the rest of the history behind the print. France had declared war on Great Britain on February 1, 1793, launching a generation of warfare between the two countries that would not end until 1815. But when this print was published on November 18, 1793 (weird coincidence, I know!), no one knew that. Instead Britain was filled with patriotic fervor, and the usual certainty that this war would be swiftly and easily won.

As the soldiers drilled and the military began its preparations, British ladies also wanted to show their patriotism and make their own contribution to the war effort. (The lady in the front is already wearing a stylish red habit, sash, and plumed hat that imitates a soldier's uniform.) Wives, mothers, and sweethearts worried that the soldiers would suffer from the cold in the coming winter, and eagerly responded by stitching undergarments of warm winter flannel for the troops. The pointed flannel caps shown here must have been liners for the tall bearskin uniform caps of the time - see one hanging on the wall along with a red uniform coat.

The "flannel campaign" was lauded by politicians and newspapers, but found no favor at all with the soldiers. Companies that were presented with the flannel underclothes refused them outright. Not only did they not want to wear what they perceived as foolish and unnecessary garments, but they also wanted no part of the ladies' "charity", and apparently were quite blunt about it, too.

So the soldiers marched off without under-drawers, and the ladies were offended by their ingratitude, with both leaving caricaturists like Gillray with plenty of inspiration.

The name will be as unfamiliar to many of my readers as it was to me. In his own day, though, Nadar was a celebrity. He knew everybody—and he photographed them—alphabetically from Tsar Alexander III to Emile Zola, as his Wikimedia Commons page demonstrates.

He was far more than a sought-after portrait photographer, though. Nadar became the first photographer to devise a way to use artificial lighting, in order to take pictures of the Paris catacombs. He was also a balloonistwho one day discovered, after numerous failed attempts, how to take aerial photographs without ruining the plates (the problem was the balloon’s gas valve). This trial and error accomplishment transformed mapping techniques. It also led to this Daumier caricature

Along with his identities as photographer, balloonist, and inventor, Nadar was a caricaturist and writer. He was, in short, a man of many talents, living in an era and a city, Paris, of tremendous creative energy.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

I've written before about 18thc. pockets, those indispensable accessories that women wore tied around their waists and beneath their skirts. Some pockets are humble and hard-working and made of patchwork scraps, while others are elegantly worked in silk to be admired.

But this one is something special. The pocket from the collection of Colonial Williamsburg, where I saw it earlier this year. (It was stored in a study drawer, which partially obscures the very top of the edge in the photo, above.) This pocket is also a sampler, a needlework practice-piece to demonstrate skill at embroidering.

The maker proudly included her name - Judith Robinson - along with her initials. Nothing more is known about her, but it's likely she lived in Pennsylvania, and likely, too, that this was one of her first girlhood projects as a budding needleworker. The motifs she chose - the lions, trees, and birds - were typical of Pennsylvania German samplers of the time. At first glance, it appears Judith included a date below the pocket's opening. Instead of a date, however, the numerals are simply 1-8, with the 9 a haphazard afterthought in the middle of the design.

Judith's counted-thread cross-stitches were done in shades of blue wool on linen. Some of the wool has become fragile and worn away over time, as has the printed floral cotton used to bind the edges. It's easy to imagine the pocket becoming a favorite piece in Judith's wardrobe, worn with pleasure over and over - and why not, with those cheery lions, right, for company?

Many thanks to Linda Baumgarten, Jan Gilliam, and Christina Westenberger for "opening the drawers" of the collection for me. Colonial Williamsburg has much of their collection on-line here in their E-Museum, and it's constantly being updated as more pieces are researched, catalogued, and photographed. Go explore!Above: Woman's pocket (Judith Robinson), wool embroidery on linen, America, Mid-Atlantic (Pennsylvania), c. 1780-1820. Collection, Colonial Williamsburg. Photographs by Susan Holloway Scott with permission of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Saturday, November 14, 2015

It's time for Breakfast Links - our weekly round-up of fav links to other articles, images, blogs, and websites via Twitter.
• Magic in motion: the Victorian toys spinning back to life as GIFs.
• Astonishing trove of 2600+ undelivered 17thc. letters.
• Hester Bateman: an extraordinary 18thc silversmith and businesswoman.
• A stylish gown and coat that survived San Francisco earthquake.
• How the Industrial Revolution made Americans eat like animals.
• Image: beautiful photograph of sunset from the top of Belvoir Castle.
• One of Queen Victoria's hats (when she wasn't wearing a crown.)
• When Wall Street was a wall.
• Thomas Jefferson's ten rules for life, and how they were satirized.
• The deadly history of women using perfume as poison.
• A selection of 18thc. European walking sticks and canes.
• Library of Congress acquires portfolio of photographs of over 600 U.S. public libraries.
• Image: Rare locket with posthumous eye miniature and lock of hair of Princess Charlotte (1796-1817.)
• Ten things you won't see on Downton Abbey (like servants actually working.)
• Designing women: the Hewitt sisters and the remaking of a modern museum.
• An Arizona high school cross-country team is building on the Hopi tradition of running - and winning.
• Uncovering early woodenwater-pipes in Salem, MA.
• Image: Window shopping, Kensington High Street, London, 1926.
• The Lake District estate where Beatrix Potter first imagined Peter Rabbit to be restored.
• A mysterious object found in Lyme Regis could have belonged to famed fossil collector Mary Anning.
• A nearly-lost fashion art: making artificial flowers (and there's a museum, too!)
• How to make medieval bread.
• Lottie O'NeilI, the first woman legislator in Illinois elected in 1922.
• Image: 17thc. paper needlework pattern that bears the prick-marks made by the needleworker.
• Birds saved centuries-old documents in their nests.
• Georgian consumerism: living on credit.
• Rogue's gallery: finding the criminals and crimes behind Victorian mugshots.
• Satyr calisthenics and other oddities.
• Digitised vintage kimono patterns.
• Image: Just for fun: Costume change!Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.

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A Polite Explanation

There’s a big difference in how we use history. But we’re equally nuts about it. To us, the everyday details of life in the past are things to talk about, ponder, make fun of -- much in the way normal people talk about their favorite reality show.

We talk about who’s wearing what and who’s sleeping with whom. We try to sort out rumor or myth from fact. We thought there must be at least three other people out there who think history’s fascinating and fun, too. This blog is for them.